The Time I Met Nick Lowe In Drag! Oh, And He & Los Straitjackets Are Coming To Town Halloween Night!

It's bound to happen. Somebody will ask you what you did for Halloween and, like every other year, you'll have no good answer. None you wanna say out loud, anyway.

But what if this year was different?

Imagine walking into work November 1 and hearing the other worker bees going on about the usual Halloween nonsense knowing that what you did for Halloween was, for once, ten times cooler than anything they've done in THEIR LIVES!

Sure, it's way too early for stores to be busting out the Halloween fare (not that some haven't jumped the gun for commerce), but it's never too early for the sophisticated concertgoer among us to make the necessary plans to put everybody else's Halloween to shame by grabbing tickets now to see Nick Lowe's Quality Rock & Roll Revue, featuring Los Straitjackets, on Halloween night (October 31) at Lincoln Hall.

Or continue reading as fellow Chicagoans with impeccable taste in music catch wind of Lowe's impending arrival in our fair city and lap up all the tickets while you continue devouring

every

word

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article.

Hey, did I tell you about the time I met Nick Lowe?

It was Halloween night (hmm) and my girlfriend and I decided it would be a hoot to go to the show dressed as one another. Wearing one of her mom's dresses, I didn't get three steps down Fullerton parkway before a car of jovial strangers unleashed some truly chauvinistic cat-calls in my general direction, which, as a man, I took as a supreme compliment.

Two steps later, my heels were officially killing me and I wanted to die.

With a fresh new blister on each heel, we finally reach the venue and, having played the joint many times, I motion my girlfriend to the venue's side entrance (where bands load-in) in hopes of bypassing the lengthy line waiting to get in.

Ever the chivalrous type, I go to open the door for my lady, but, in doing so, my right heel snaps and all hell breaks lose for a couple seconds.

"Hey fella, ya dropped something," jokes a voice behind me and the next thing I see is Nick Lowe bending down to pick up my broken heel.

The look on his face as he handed it back to me was one of genuine surprise and bemusement (my girlfriend called it an inaudible "Yeesh").

He'd made the joke, knowing I was a dude, yet the look on his face haunts me to this day.

Later on, as we waited for the show to begin, she and I howled with delight as we replayed every millisecond of the encounter and opined on the topic of just how much crazy shit Nick Lowe has seen in his long and storied career and, therefore, how much it must take to genuinely surprise the man.

Well, normally I could keep this up all day, but I still haven't bought my tickets yet and, well...I've also got to pick a dress out for the show.